The Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City said the campaign suggests the priests' behaviour was questionable.

Two of the slain priests died in Veracruz state last week.

Veracruz state prosecutors alleged they were drinking with their killers before they disappeared

Another priest was abducted and died in Michoacan state.

Local media published a photo taken from security footage that seems to show the priest at a hotel with a boy.

Other reports later said the man in the image was not the priest.

The Michoacan state prosecutors' office did not respond to a request for comment on the photo.

Father Hugo Valdemar Romero said "it has become clear that state governments that cannot handle the drug cartels are criminalizing the victims ..."

He said they show some as drunks and another as a pedophile.

It makes it "look like the crimes were not related to drug cartels but because of some immoral conduct."

"To physical death they are adding moral assassination, slandering the priests and holding them up to ridicule."

"And that has caused deep indignation in the church."

The Mexican Council of Bishops also urged authorities to investigate the killings.

The investigations must not cast aspersions on the victims, they said.

"We respectfully and urgently demand that the respective authorities get to the bottom of both cases … and with the same forcefulness, we demand that no priest, or anyone, be slandered, above all before the investigations are finished," the council wrote.

Source

• Crux
• Image:cruxnow.com

Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House in El Paso, told the eight bishops on the subcommittee Oct. 20 that there is a "steady stream" of refugees trying to escape their country's "police, military and government," as well as the nation's drug cartels.